Top Trend of 2018: Retail mashups

December 26, 2018

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The St-W Team

Amsterdam – Want to get more millennial customers interested in your fashion line? Open a store and in a small cinema, for good measure. Want to get more people to come to church? Open the beer tap. This year, we saw the boundaries between retail, hospitality and institutional typologies coming together in ever odder – but positively surprising – Venn diagrams. As increasingly sophisticated audiences demand newer experiences from their retail and hospitality spaces, the non-typology has become the new typology.

Here are the top five retail-hospitality-institutional mashup case studies of the year on St-Wweb, St-W and the St-W Awards.

Photos by Pablo Enriquez

[1] GUCCI’S SOHO STORE

‘Instead of a parade of intimidating black-suited security guards on the street, shoppers entering the 930-sq-m space find sneakers, handbags and garments; exposed brick walls and comfy sofas for a moment of repose. To encourage visitors to spend time in the store and to transform it into a place of recreation, Gucci incorporated video installations, augmented reality and tablets for designing DIY bags. A house-music documentary on one big screen is audible through custom-made, cat-eared headphones.’

[2] ARKET AMSTERDAM

‘”But more importantly [than highlighting the products],” Axelsson continues, “a physical store has to be a place where customers feel at ease and are happy to spend time. Including a café seemed like a natural way to achieve this.” Headed by chef Martin Berg, the Arket café takes the New Nordic Food Manifesto as its vision, offering fresh, simple cuisine with quality ingredients. The space overlooks a picturesque canal and features custom-made furniture in warm wood.’

[3] TOYOTA’S CAR-SHARING CAFÉ IN NAGOYA

‘The Japanese car brand is equally committed, however, to the development of services that fall within the larger scope of mobility. One such initiative is Drive to Go, a new retail concept based on car sharing. The service targets people under the age of 25 who live in metropolitan areas and can afford neither the steep costs of ownership nor the accompanying maintenance expenses and parking fees.’

[4] AL RAWI IN SHARJAH

‘The designers created spaces made for those who sit down quietly for hours to immerse themselves in a book to those who would prefer to snack-and-talk about the pages they’re reading – hence the different types of seats, and environments like an open kitchen for live cooking demonstrations and a café featuring Mutina's Puzzle tiles by Barber & Osgerby.’

[5] DE PLEK IN ANTWERP

‘Opened in 1521, the Cathedral of Our Lady is the tallest Gothic building in the Benelux. Inside the massive treasure chest one can find paintings by Rubens, the bronze tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, an 1889 Schyven organ and now, thanks to a project by local architecture studio Interieur Van Staeyen, also a beer bar. Yes: some of the best drinks in Antwerp, just like most things in the eccentric Flemish city, might just be where one would least expect them.’